“I—I don’t know. He’s out.”
“He’s away on the moor,” said Fly. “Polly, are you really anxious about baby Pearl?”
“I have no time to be anxious,” said Polly. “I must find her first. I’ll tell you then if I’m anxious. Where’s Nell, where are the twins?”
“On the moor; they all went out with father.”
“Which moor, the South or Peg-Top?”
“I think the South moor.”
“All right, I’m going out too. What’s the matter, Fly? Oh, you’re not to come.”
“Please, please, it’s so horrid in the house, and Bunny does make my dress so soppy with crying into it.”
“You’re not to come. You are to stay here and do your best, your very best, for father and the others when they come home. If they don’t meet me, say I’ve gone to look for baby and for Flower. I’ll come back when I’ve found them. If they find baby and Flower, they might ask to have the church bells rung, then I’ll know. Don’t stare at me like that, Fly; it was my fault, so I must search until I find them.”
Polly ran out of the house and down the lawn. Once again she was out on the moor. The great solitary commons stretched to right and left; they were everywhere, they filled the whole horizon, except just where Sleepy Hollow lay, with its belt of trees, its cultivated gardens, and just beyond the little village and the church with the square, gray tower. There was a great lump in Polly’s throat, and a mist before her eyes. The dreadful beating was still going on in her heart, and the surging, ceaseless waves of sound in her ears.